The primary focus of this issue of Crime and Social Justice is on racism. The secondary focus is on punishment. The two themes overlap and interconnect, of course, given the enormously high and disproportionate concentration of racial and national minorities in prison.

The three leading articles address racism from very different perspectives. "Concerning the Shooting of Eulia Love" is a bureaucratic report issued by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. It concerns the outrageous shooting by the police of Mrs. Love in January 1979. Given the horror of what happened, the dispassionate tone of the report is quite chilling. We think that this document says more about the topic of "police use of deadly force" than most academic studies on the subject.

Charles Tracy's article on the experience of the Chinese in Oregon in the late 19th century is more than a historical curiosity. It deepens our understanding of the interconnections between the political-economy, racism, crime, and criminal justice. It also provides a much-needed historical framework for understanding comparable developments in the black community and the experience of the Mrs. Loves of the world.

The third article on racism, "Civil Rights Activity and Reduction in Crime Among Negroes," was originally published over 15 years ago. We think that it is an important article that should be read, studied, and used as a possible model for contemporary research. Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth and other writers have investigated the relationship between crime and racism. To the best of our knowledge, however, this is the only article to attempt to put this matter on a sound empirical foundation. In these times of increasing "street" crime and dismantling of social services, a great deal can be learned from this article, which finds that intraracial (black on black) crime is reduced during periods of "organized community action."

This issue contains four pieces that address various aspects of prisons and punishment. Martin Miller's "Sinking Gradually into the Proletariat" adds to the growing "revisionist" history of the penitentiary by examining Auburn prison in the context of the "changing wage labor markets of a nascent capitalist society." It is a welcome correction to David Rothman's thesis in Discovery of the Asylum. Dario Melossi's sober and informative biography of Georg Rusche allows us to finally understand something about the intellectual and personal history of the pioneer of the "labor market" thesis of punishment.

We are very pleased to include in this issue a very thoughtful "Forum" piece on "The Ideology of Prison Research," written by an 11-person collective, all of whose members are, or were at some time, prisoners at Stateville in Illinois. The essay is in part a book review of James Jacobs' Stateville. Yet it is much more than a review. Like Tony Platt's review of John Irwin's Prisons in Turmoil (also in this issue), it addresses the theoretical weaknesses and political dangers of bourgeois liberal ideology. When such ideology enters the prison or the prisoners' movement in the guise of "reform," it must be swiftly exposed. Otherwise, as Platt's review suggests, considerable damage can be done.

Finally, this issue includes a broadly focused critique by John Galliher of three leading books on delinquency. Similarly, this essay review explores the hegemony of liberal ideology in criminology.